The Guardian has launched a new liveblog in its next development of its open newslist trial, which it started last year to facilitate greater discussion around the given topics.

According to a blog post by UK news editor Dan Roberts, Newsdesk Live was prompted by “limitations” with the open newsdesk which became apparent, “chiefly the difficulty of using a simple grid and 140 characters to communicate all the complexities of the day’s news with an outside audience”.

Newsdesk Live will “incorporate the open newslist, but will also feature a live comment thread allowing readers to discuss what’s going on directly rather than having to do so via Twitter”.

Yesterday and today, staff at the Guardian have been having a get together that sums up the kind of thing the organisation is really good at.

The Guardian Hack Day is about getting its developers in a room and getting them to build stuff, with helpful advice from staff from editorial, commercial, or anywhere I think.

Information architect Martin Belam probably describes it better:

I suppose we should explain a bit more about what a “hack day” is at the Guardian. Essentially for two working days our tech team puts aside their normal work, and gets to work on a project of their own choosing. Sometimes they will work as teams, sometimes as individuals. (And sometimes I think they have been secretly coding the things for months in advance anyway). Other people, like the design and UX team, and commercial & editorial staff, are also encouraged to take part if they can spare the time.

Created by Chris Thorpe, who used to work for the Guardian’s Open API Platform team, it uses a Guardian JSON feed to turn the news organisation’s new experimental open newslist into a great looking column-based page, with links to reporters’ Twitter accounts and a Guardian API search to try and match the newslist to published stories.